Using laminated and/or tempered glass panels for balconies, terraces, swimming pools, solariums enclosures and room dividers is a well-known resource employed by professionals in the construction and decoration arts.
Said enclosures advantageously prevents or mitigate the passage of wind while providing at the same a decorative environment, allowing a panoramic vision of the surroundings. For said aesthetics reasons, said enclosures formed by adjacent glass plates should employ as little as possible structural components such as uprights, which may mar said view and the decorative aspect of said enclosures.
The above said implies that if we do not place uprights, columns or other structural components, the anchoring of the glass panels is basically limited to fixing them to the floor, such as a balcony floor, slab, etc. inside a shape or shapes component into which lodges each glass plate: This limits the height of the crowning of the glass panels, resulting in very low height enclosures, preventing the construction of glass walls having a greater height, such as, for instance, up to 3 meters. Indeed, for security reasons, balcony railings must have a minimum height; while low height glass walls offers no means of protection against the action of the wind, hence their low height does not fulfil this purpose.
Additionally, considering the use of glass panels as spatial dividers (e.g.) separating grandstands from the actual playing field, the use of thick laminated glass panels is ideal because it allows the onlookers a view of the playing field without obstructions or limitations, while said glass panels for security reasons do not provide any possible means to climb over the separation barrier and perform an illegal entry into the playing field. Nevertheless, in these cases to constitute an effective barrier, said glass wall must have an average height of 3 meters. Its anchoring to the floor by means of known traditional means does not allow performing this construction unless structural reinforcing means are employed, such as columns or the like, obstructing the view.
for the purposes of this instant invention, the following terms have the following meanings:
ENCLOSURE: Is any structure or construction able to delimit or subdivide an area, enclosure, perimeter, balcony, railings or the like.
GLASS PANEL: It is any plate of transparent or translucent material, such as tempered glass, laminated glass, acrylic plates or the like.
TRANSPARENT: This term must be understood as the ability of the panel to be transparent and allow, with a greater or lesser degree depending on its tonality, the vision through it. It is included within this term the translucent panels such as one way mirrors, or partially decorated glass panels.